Trump warns North Korea: You will be met with “fire and fury” the likes of which the world has never seen; Update: McCain grumbles; Update: North Korea threatens Guam

AllahpunditPosted at 5:31 pm on August 8, 2017

A soundbite like this, in which the president of the United States more or less explicitly threatens to nuke someone, really deserves its own thread. Says Ken White, “Who the f*** let the President watch Game of Thrones right before a press conference”?

I feel like that Trump/Kim summit at the White House might not happen now. Remember?

Trump spoke to Bloomberg on Monday, saying, “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him [Kim], I would, absolutely. I would be honored to do it.”

“Most political people would never say that,” he continued, “but I’m telling you, under the right circumstances, I would meet with him. We have breaking news.”

Air Force vet John Noonan sees wisdom in tough talk with Kim:

To wit, wars don't start because of inflammatory rhetoric. They start when aggressors believe the cost of violence is affordable.

The American public seems surprisingly open to war with North Korea given the magnitude of the threat, actually, and I’m not sure Trump doesn’t really mean it. But I also don’t know what an overt threat conveys that Kim doesn’t already know. A nuclear attack on the United States, even if unsuccessful, obviously would be endgame for him and North Korea. My concern with Trump’s threat is that it might tempt Kim to do something he otherwise wouldn’t in order to telegraph his defiance — say, a hastily arranged missile test that goes astray and ends up with a NorK rocket crashing into the Japanese mainland. Would Trump respond to that with fire and fury or would he let it slide because it was unintentional? If the latter, his threat will have the opposite effect of the one described by Noonan.